


is there balm in gilead?

by manticoremoons



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Prompt Fill, attempted character studying, like she's brilliant at just about everything, love hurts and then you build a bomb and move on, raven's pretty brilliant at that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:00:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1906872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manticoremoons/pseuds/manticoremoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Well,” she asked grumpily, “what’s one of those flying ravens look like?” What she wanted to ask was why her Mama named her after some creature she’d never even seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	is there balm in gilead?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youcallitwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcallitwinter/gifts).



> I finally mainlined this show like a fiend and finished it yesterday, saw this [prompt](http://fluffyfrolicker.livejournal.com/49569.html?thread=1590177#t1590177)(Prompt: the 100. raven/bellamy. it's taboo to admit that you're lonely) and couldn't help myself, didn't stop until this story was done. This is more a Raven story than it is Raven/Bellamy or even Raven/Finn - my apologies to youcallitwinter who is a champion prompter. She's just where my head's at and I'm trying to wrap my brain around her.
> 
> Self-indulgent references to Poe's _The Raven_ in the title and further on, as well as Greek mythology for no other reason than that I can. I also used the handy Ark summary page on the show's wiki for the structure of the ship in case anything is any way confusing (e.g. Mecha Station, Go-Sci etc.). Disclaimer: these characters do not belong to me, I'm just borrowing them. All mistakes are my own and hopefully not egregious.

__

_ —That bridge has survived a nuclear war and 97 years of weather.  
—It won’t survive me. _

##  _The Ark_

“Mama, what does my name mean?”

“What does—oh do you mean ‘raven’?” Mama’s face scrunched up as she thought about it and Raven smiled because she made that face a lot when she was trying to figure out things. “Well, a raven is a sort of bird. Now pass me that lip rouge, lovely,” she said briskly. She glanced at the dented old clock on the wall and her mouth flattened into a straight line.

Raven frowned. “What’s a bird?”

Mama laughed. She was half-way to painting her lips dark pink with the oily stuff she got from Miss Claire in Hydra Station. She was careful with it—lip rouge didn’t come cheap but having it made Mama really good at her job. Sometimes when she made herself up real pretty and even put the special green paint above her eyes and lined them with black ink, she’d come home with special treats and enough units to keep them eating well for weeks.

“A bird is one of those flying creatures from Earth.”

At the mention of ‘earth’, Raven’s face folded up like a vacuum-pack. She’d been learning more about ‘earth’ in morning class this month and every Unity Day the whole Ark came together to talk and sing about it. To Raven, Earth seemed like some kind of far-away dream. No one alive on the Ark had even seen it, not for _hundreds_ of generations. But they sure couldn’t stop talking about it. Unity Days were the worst, everyone had to wait for hours while the fancy kids from Government and Science Station, Go-Sci, told the same old story every year. Raven didn’t know much about Go-Sci kids except that they had soft-looking clothes and boots that probably hadn’t been belonged to five people before they got to wear them. Everyone watched them reading the story of Unity Day with amazed smiles on their faces like those kids were something special.

It was dumb is what it was. And boring too.

“Well,” she asked grumpily, “what’s one of those flying ravens look like?” What she wanted to ask was why her Mama named her after some creature she’d never even seen.

Mama sighed, pursing her pretty lips at the speckled mirror that hung by the bed they shared. “I don’t _know_ , Raven, goodness sake.” Her voice was sharp and crackly like a rusty knife as though she was tired of Raven’s questions already. This happened a lot because Raven asked a lot of questions. “It flies and it’s a bird. No one’s seen one of them since the last birds that were bred on the Ark up and died during the last big virus outbreak. And that,” she said with one of her soft, sly grins, “Was way before your time, _pajarita_. Way before mine even.” She leaned down to press her cheek to Raven’s, careful not to smudge her the red stuff on her mouth.

Half of Raven wanted to ask more questions but the side of her that just wanted to enjoy having Mama so close and smiling so bright like a new light bulb won out. She let herself be cuddled.

Mama pulled away eventually and straightened up her dress, drawing the material so tight across her chest that Raven worried she’d have trouble breathing right.

“Do not stay up late reading those stupid rocket fuel manuals—.”

“But Mama,” Raven complained.

“No buts. I will never understand how I got such a smart kid with a head for numbers but you will sleep before the lights go out, understood?”

She had on her serious face, the one Raven couldn’t say ‘no’ to even if she tried.

“Yes, Mama.”

After a, “Be good,” she was gone.

In morning school, they’d learned that on Earth, the sun had shone and turned everything bright and yellow. Mecha Station’s lights were a very quiet grey. They flickered sometimes and you couldn’t keep them on for longer than five hours at a stretch. Otherwise you’d burn through your quota for the week or the energy running through the bulb filament would run out. At least that’s what the regulations said. Raven had figured out weeks ago how to wind the light just right that it would keep on shining and no one would know. She’d scorched her fingers while she was at it but that was better than not being able to read through the _Fundamentals of Rocket Fuel_ , a manual she’d borrowed from Mecha’s run-down library. Mama would never find out since she only came back from work around the time Raven had to go to morning school anyway.

Raven thought about the birds and the sun that burned yellow. She snorted. It was hard to imagine it. The numbers in the book she held on her lap made a whole lot more sense.

She didn’t much care about ravens and make-believe stories about earth. But, she thought, as she snuggled on the hard mattress and pulled up the steel-coloured regulation in-heat sheet, she might like to _fly_ one day.

 

*

 

Once, in Raven’s last year of school before she switched to her advanced engineering apprenticeship, she read about some old Earth dude called Icarus. She’d only picked the story because her teacher, Mrs Singhclark had said something about how Icarus’ good old dad, Daedalus, was a big shot inventor. Surprisingly, while Daedalus was interesting, it was Icarus she couldn’t stop thinking about. The guy who wanted to touch the sun so bad it fried him up and killed him.

Part of her figured Daedalus should’ve been smarter and built a better escape pod. If he had done that maybe his idiot son wouldn’t have died. But there was something in Icarus’ obsession with the sun that called to her. She’d tasted that kind of thing when she’d competed against forty other students for the sole position in the Zero G Mech Course, when she’d won a prize for Earth Skills three years running, when she’d tried to save enough to units to get Mama a bed in Ark Station Medical the time she’d started coughing up red. The guards came to take Mama to the Quarantine unit anyway and Raven hadn’t seen her ever again.

She understood, like Icarus, wanting a thing so badly you were willing to let it burn you all up from the inside.

But, the first time she pressed up against Finn outside the Sector M-17 mess hall and licked into his mouth, tasted the dried bean soup they’d had for dinner on his tongue, and dragged him even closer—she realised that perhaps she hadn’t completely understood Icarus after all. Before Finn, she’d never known the way wanting someone could live right in your bones and light up every nerve ending like you had Mung’s Fever. The way this— _feeling_ could blaze down your throat like the worst lighter fluid whisky and leave you reeling the morning after.

“You know,” Finn said with a panting groan, “If I’d known it could be like that when we were kids, I would’ve made a move years ago.”

Raven punched Finn in the arm. He rolled off her with a pained grunt. “Ow, what was that for.”

Raven smirked and stretched her arms up above her head, her skin cooling in the muggy maintenance bay’s air. She curled her toes into the rumpled bed of clothes they’d made for themselves. There was an ache in her lower abdomen and between her thighs that brought a smile to her face—Finn had a real way with his fingers and his tongue.

“You said it yourself, genius. We were kids—that would’ve been gross.”

“True.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. Raven felt a thrill of warmth from that patch of exposed skin emanate through her body. And then Finn’s lips drifted along her collarbone and the sharp jut of her chin to the corner of her mouth. She tilted her head to kiss him firmly, drawing him close with a hand in his hair.

Before the kiss could get too heated, she pulled back. “As much as I would love to be gross and hot with you for the third time today—I have to get to work.”

Finn looked at her as though he might be inspired to convince her to keep rolling around naked for a couple more hours. She slid out from underneath him and clambered to her feet.

“Those eyes will not work on me. Get dressed and get out,” she said, tossing his shirt at him.

“You don’t mean that.” He gazed at her through the fall of his hair and she could see his hand trailing down to touch himself.

While she was impressed by his stamina, Raven had a maintenance check quota to fill and not even the promise of amazing sex could distract her from that. Choosing to ignore the blatant challenge, she turned around to slip her tunic over her head with a laugh. “Oh I do, handsome. I have an even hotter date with a thruster and a micro-blowtorch, thanks very much.”

“You have no idea how hot you sound when you do your mechanic-speak.”

Raven rolled her eyes, a smile tugging at her mouth despite herself. She laced on her boots and silently thanked the rocket fuel gods that Finn had relented and was getting dressed too—she’d never been very good at saying no to temptation.

When he was fully dressed, he leaned against the bay’s walls, still a bit rumpled from their play. He watched closely as Raven put on her bulky space suit.

“What’s it like?” he asked suddenly.

“What’s what like, babe?” She fastened her oxy-tube and emergency harness, on the off-chance that she somehow got detached from the repair pod and needed to avoid drifting off into space.

“You know—spacewalking?” There was an awed note in his voice and Raven let herself bask in it. She was pretty much the only person her age who got to spacewalk regularly, the youngest Zero G mechanic in 51 years. She loved that feeling.

“Oh, you know,” she replied, nonchalant.

“I wish,” Finn muttered. There was definitely a trace of envy there.

Raven snickered and walked toward him, the suit making her steps clumsy. She tapped him lightly on the chin and made her eyes big and round. “Don’t worry, hot stuff. One day when you’re awesome like me, you might get a chance.”

Finn rolled his eyes and laughed. “Ha-ha.”

Kissing his nose, she shoved him away gently. “Okay, I need to get to this but I’ll catch you later, yeah? And then we can pick up where we left off with the whole being hot and gross and naked with each other.” She licked at his chin before nipping at the flesh there until he jumped, a slow groan spilling from his mouth. “I might even tie you up and show you the next best thrill after Zero G.”

She pulled on her oxygen mask, grabbed her tool box and pressed the release button to the X Dock. When she turned around for one last wave, she noticed Finn watching her progress intently before he shook himself as if from a trance and raised his hand in a mock salute. Raven responded in kind and blew him a kiss as the door slid closed.

 

*

 

Raven’s eyes were hurting. Everything was hurting. Her fingers ached, covered in numerous bruises from some of the delicate engine work she’d done on the Mir-3 escape pod over the last twelve hours. Her arms were sore; the soles of her feet were throbbing too from standing so much. The last time she’d sat down to oil and sand a thruster, she’d stayed down so long her legs had fallen asleep—just trying to move from that had felt like getting a hundred measles vaccinations all at once. Too bad she couldn’t actually sleep.

“Fuck it,” she cursed as another spark off the engine singed her fingertips.

At least here in the deepest bowls of Mecha Station, no one could find her and she could work on the escape pod in peace. The hours of uninterrupted focus helped her forget normal things like stopping to drink or piss or eat. Right now she was running on nothing but rocket fuel fumes and fear.

Fear that she’d mess this up, that she’d fail and kill herself and Abby on the way down, that she’d never see Finn again.

None of those things was an option.

Earth still seemed like a dream or a funny story people told their kids. And yet she was going there in T-2 days. She couldn’t imagine it. Not really.

The Ark failing, like Abby said, that she understood. That this pod and her ability to make it run was her only hope, she got that too.

But it was Finn, knowing he was down there, that’s what kept her going. It made the thought of leaving the Ark as easy to brush away from her mind as sweat on her brow. There wasn’t anything left for her on this old creaking ship. Everything she loved was down there and she would find it again.

Or die trying.

 

##  _Earth_

None of the stories prepared her.

Not for the taste of air. Real air, not the shit the Ark recycled until it was unbreathable. Not for the brush of wind— _real wind_ —not the blowback from a turbine. Not for the firmness of the ground beneath your feet, or sand that stains your shoes and fingers deep reddish-brown, or flowers. Or colours even—every colour she never imagined back on the Ark, some she doesn’t even know the name of.

Or the sun, the way it burns but doesn’t. An open flame that doesn’t hurt or have that greasy rocket fuel smell she’s used. It shines bright yellow just like they said.

Or the full-body feeling of holding Finn again, pushing herself into him, kissing him so desperately like she wants to swallow him—like they can swallow each other and never let go.

 

*

 

The stories didn’t prepare her for how much it would hurt to love and love and love, give everything up for it, and not get loved back.

 

*

 

It’s the kind of defeat she’s never experienced. Not since Mama—and even that was different, there’d been no _choice_ then. This time someone is choosing and they aren’t choosing her. Every smile, every glance, every fucking moment Clarke and Finn are within a foot of each other it slaps her in the face.

Part of her is embarrassed. Here she is, the youngest Zero G mechanic the Ark’s seen in more than a half-century, she’s brilliant—everyone’s told her so since she was a kid and she’d moved heaven to fly after a boy who didn’t want her. Couldn’t even _see_ her as anything more than his friend. She can’t be angry, not the way she wants because she’s just happy he’s alive. If that doesn’t make her pathetic, she doesn’t know what does.

The rest of her hides from it. Raven doesn’t lose. If she tries and works at it and works through every single permutation of herself, she can make Finn love her the way she needs. She knew him, knew how to break him apart like a rocket engine with her eyes closed—that had to count for something.

In the end, it doesn’t count for very much.

 

*

 

The kicker? She can’t even hate Clarke. Not for lack of trying. But even if she’s a preachy know-it-all with some kind of ridiculous hero complex, Raven just can’t find it in herself to hate her. She maybe even likes her.

 

*

 

In lieu of yelling or sulking or, worse, crying, she does what she does best. It turns out that even on a place with plenty gravity, her skills come in handy. She might not be able to keep Finn but she can build bombs and landmines, weld bullets, blow up bridges and leave a trail of scorched earth in her wake. She can maim and destroy and even kill.

The truth of it is that it’s nice to be needed. To look at Bellamy or Clarke and know she’s got the solution to their unasked questions or the latest camp crisis. That she can sit down at her desk and tamper with the rocket ship’s main fuel line wires or use a pair of tweezers to craft a bomb and _make things happen_ the way she always has—the girl who’s better with grease and engines than she’s ever been with anything else.

Raven from the Ark is now Raven on Earth and she’s harder, meaner but still fundamentally the same. She’ll pick herself up and put herself together again one bomb, one bullet at a time.

Survival on earth is a whole different kettle of crazy but like almost everything else, she’s brilliant at it. Ever since she landed, she's been fighting for her life and for the people around her. She didn't face death by roasting in a rusty tin can of an escape pod only to die because of a bunch of grounders. So she fights.

 

*

 

When Finn and Clarke are the only ones that don’t come back from the foraging trip, it hurts the way a bullet to the gut must hurt. She flinches and tries not to let Murphy see it on her face. She has an idea, from the way he looks at her with a twisted asshole smirk, that she doesn’t do all that well. The prospect of going to her bunk and hiding, being alone with her wounds and her thoughts and her too-active imagination that’s already envisioning _skin-lips-flesh_ , well, to be honest, sucks.

So she picks the next best option: she goes to Bellamy. Bellamy, as much as he annoys her with the whole big captain on deck act, would _get_ it. She doesn’t want kindness or love, she wants someone who’s just as angry as she is, as greedy and mean, lonely and perhaps a tiny bit needy. If she’s a puddle of exposed rocket fuel then Bellamy’s about the only person who could stand getting burned and not make it a _thing_.

His tent smells like old sweat and gun oil. It’s surprisingly neat and Raven remembers that Bellamy used to be a guard. He keeps his belongings in tip-top order, clothes in a small neat pile, a make-shift table strewn in gun entrails, plans and old Earth maps and a pair of open-flame torches that give the whole tent a reddish glow.

She paces. There’s too much buzzing in her head and she feels ready to burst, an over-pressurised oxy-valve.

“What are you doing here?”

She halts her fitful movements and turns to face him.

“They don’t waste time, I’ll give them that,” she says, trying for flippant but there’s a rawness in her voice that makes her pause to swallow. “What’s it been, hunh? A day and a half?”

Bellamy looks away before the slight flicker in his gaze can turn into something intolerable like pity.

“You’re mistaking me for someone who cares.” He clenches his jaw and says brusquely, “It’s time to move on.”

It should hurt. Anyone else might get that kind of dismissal and feel bruised. But Raven’s been bleeding long before this—and there’s something about Bellamy’s abrasiveness and frankly awful people skills that’s exactly what she needs. He’s a firebrand cauterising all these open wounds, and it feels _good_. She doesn’t want gentle. She’s never needed it—not really. So she plops down on his mattress and toes off her boots, shrugs out of her jacket, tossing it behind her carelessly.

She can feel him watching her.

“What are you doing?”

“Moving on.” She stands up and shimmies out of her pants. There’s no shame or self-consciousness when it comes to baring her body. In some way, it doesn’t even feel like this is about flesh-and-blood bodies. Sure, on some level, she’s flattered that he can’t help but look but she doesn’t need him to want _her_ any more than she wants _him_.

She steps close to him and says, “I’ve never been with anyone but Finn.” As soon as she says it, it hits her why that’s important right now. Finn owns a piece of her and perhaps fucking Bellamy of all people is about getting those parts of herself back.

“Take off your clothes.” She doesn’t do any of the usual coy or sexy moves, no slanting smiles or fluttering eyelashes. She just stares at him head on, doesn’t blink once. It’s a gauntlet and she’s thrown it.

Bellamy still doesn’t move. There’s a wariness in his eyes like he’s trying to work through a puzzle or decide his best strategy, how to deal with her, a volatile element he couldn’t predict. But this isn’t war or rocket science. She’s not asking him for anything.

“What? Should I go first?”

She strips and stands there, the cool night air seeping into the tent from outside makes her nipples pebble and goose pimples rise on her skin. She doesn’t tremble.

Bellamy’s eyes flit down quickly and he rumbles, “If you’re looking for someone to talk you down, tell you that you’re just upset and not thinking straight—I’m not that guy.”

And that right there is the reason she’s here. Bellamy doesn’t care enough to lie to her and there’s something freeing about that. She’s not here for soft words. She just wants everything going on in her head to be still and silent, to relieve the heavy pressure on her chest so she can breathe without blistering her insides.

“Good.”

She drags him close by the shirt for a kiss.

Kissing Bellamy is like wandering into a geomagnetic storm. She remembers the very last one on the Ark just a couple of months ago. The flare of red alert lights and emergency buzzers, the staticky screams for calm and the way the whole damn Ark shuddered and creaked and jolted around as plasma particles pushed through the ionosphere and heated everything up to a boiling point.

He pushes into her and she pushes back. Teeth and tongues but mostly teeth. Her fingers score into the skin at his torso because she knows he can take it. He throws her back against the bed because he knows she can too. Licking into her mouth, he leans down to suck at Raven’s throat, hard enough to make her wince. Raven uses her lower body strength to flip them over so she’s the one on top.

Bellamy doesn’t let her have the advantage entirely. He burrows his fingers between her legs to find her clit. She rocks against his hand, bites back the gasp in her throat at the spikes of pleasure from that insistent touch. It surprises her—she’d forgotten that there was a possibility that she’d _enjoy_ this.

It’s a reminder that a body is a body _is_ a body. That she belongs to herself. She doesn’t need Finn to feel good, to feel like herself. Hell, she doesn’t even need Bellamy, her fingers could do just fine.

She grins, feral, and leans down to scrape her teeth on Bellamy’s left shoulder. She bites into the freckled skin there when she feels one callused finger enter her. Bellamy’s cock is hard and leaking against his stomach. She wraps her fingers around it, the pulse of him burns against her palm and she strokes in time to the now-two fingers fucking into her cunt.

He mumbles a curse and throws his head back, revealing a sweat-flushed throat.

It feels good—it feels damn good. But she wants more.

She gets up on her knees, Bellamy’s fingers slipping out of her wetly and positions herself, guiding him inside of her until she’s fully seated. They groan in unison then. Raven meets Bellamy’s gaze. He nods, grimacing at the feel of her around him, and she’s off. She circles her hips, fucks him with such singular vigour that all he can do is lie back and let her.

He’s enjoying it, perhaps in spite of himself. He’s loud about it too, which surprises Raven, just how brashly he takes it, takes his pleasure. She gets that though. They could die tomorrow, in the next five minutes even—this, sex, pleasure, is something to take hold of with both hands because they might not see tomorrow.

The Ark didn’t teach her that but Earth has.

She reaches up to pinch at her nipples, her rhythm growing frenzied the closer she gets to the precipice. Bellamy matches her, thrusting upwards to meet her. She thinks, absently, that he’s handsome this way, without the pinched suspicion and harshness to his face—just filthy, candid gratification. He gets up on his elbows to draw her mouth into a kiss before he’s coming with a full-bodied shudder and her name garbled on his tongue. He thuds back against his pillow and she can feel him spill inside her, wet and messy. She follows with a sharp cry, her body convulsing around his softening cock, her back arched with the force of it.

She rolls off him and flops down on the bed. White noise recedes bit by bit as she descends from the high of it.

In the aftermath, she stares at the roof, the leaves making dark shadows against the red tarp. The noise in her head is quieter but not entirely gone. And somewhere below her heart, it still aches. Finn’s still rattling around inside her like a faulty engine part.

It hasn’t helped, not really. But, as she catches her breath, listens to the camp settling down for the night outside, lets the ache of good, turbine-thrusting sex sink into her bones, she thinks it will—eventually.

 

 

 

##  _Mount Weather, Blue Ridge Mountains_

She saw a picture of a raven once in a threadbare encyclopaedia tucked right at the back of the Go-Sci library—one of the last few real books from Old Earth. The sort of obscure text that no one cared enough to transcribe onto the digital mainframe. She’d stolen it and sat by her toolbox in a hidden alcove of Section 17 to look at the photograph of the bird. There wasn’t much special about it. It was black, its beak was shiny as oil-slick, and its legs poked out of its body like wheel spokes. The picture had shown its clever, beady eyes as well.

There had been a poem next to the image, written by some old writer named Poe. She hadn’t understood it then any better than she did now but she remembers the words, sad, doomed words.

_Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!_

_Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”_

_Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”_

She limps to the edge of the craggy mountain shelf, her bullet wound twinging, not-quite healed; her crutches clack against the rocky ground. The breeze is rougher up here but there’s a quiet that she enjoys. From this great height with the buffeting wind, she imagines she’s floating high above everything. She’s spent what feels like a year but is actually six or seven weeks trapped within the sterile walls of the mountain’s interior. And now, the last of the Ark’s finally shown up with all their weird rules and stupid regulations after _they_ (that’s right, it’d been her and Clarke and Bellamy, Finn, Jasper and Monty who’d done the heavy lifting, _not_ the parents) negotiated with and neutralised the mountain men. It feels good to be outside. It’s nice to just take in the land and space that sprawls out in every direction, no tight steel-grafted corners in sight. There’s even a bit of blue in the far distance that could be the sea. She’s never even seen the sea.

The door carved into the mountain’s rock-face grumbles open. Raven doesn’t turn to see who it is. Her new companion stops behind her but she knows from the uneven tread (he was injured too that day) and the faint scent of sweat and gun oil who it is.

“They’re asking for you in there—something about transistors and electromagnetic force fields. And some other rocket science mumbo jumbo.”

She snorts at that, the honest consternation in his voice, and nods. “I’m sure the ’rents can wait a minute or two.”

“You okay?” he asks after a pause. It’s worded unobtrusively enough that she could pretend she didn’t hear it with the wind gusting around them. They haven’t made it a _thing_ , even if she woke up this morning with him pinning her to his bed with his body, snoring like he wanted to bring Mt Weather down.

“Bellamy Blake,” she says, her tone arch, and she elbows him lightly just catching his side. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were genuinely worried about me.”

He grunts noncommittally and mutters, “Cute.” By which he means, _you’re still an annoying pain in the ass_.

He doesn’t leave then. Instead, he steps closer so that she can feel the pleasant solidity of him at her back. She doesn’t lean into him, doesn’t reach for the fingers brushing against her own—nor does she pull away. Something inside her loosens a bit just from having him here with her. It doesn’t come with a bucket-load of expectations, no questions or answers, it just is.

She breathes in deep through her nose and exhales with a grin.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is cool.


End file.
